Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02 eBook

acts of rash and impulsive persons may possibly
disappoint these expectations of the Government,
he deems it proper that you shall be prepared with
instructions to meet so unhappy a contingency.
He has, therefore, directed me verbally to give
you such instructions.

You are carefully to avoid every act
which would needlessly tend to provoke aggression,
and for that reason you are not, without evident
and imminent necessity, to take up any position which
could be construed into the assumption of a hostile
attitude. But you are to hold possession
of the forts in this harbor, and if attacked you
are to defend yourself to the last extremity.
The smallness of your force will not permit you,
perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three
forts, but an attack on or attempt to take possession
of either one of them will be regarded as an act of
hostility, and you may then put your command into either
of them which you may deem most proper, to increase
its power of resistance. You are also authorized
to take similar defensive steps whenever you have
tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a
hostile act.

Upon mere superficial inspection these instructions
disclosed only the then dominant anxiety of the Administration
to prevent collision. But if we remember that
they were sent to Major Anderson without the President’s
knowledge, and without the knowledge of General Scott,[1]
and especially if we keep in sight the state of public
sentiment of both Charleston and Washington and the
paramount official influences which had taken definite
shape in the President’s truce, we can easily
read between the lines that they were most artfully
contrived to lull suspicion while effectually restraining
Major Anderson from any act or movement which might
check or control the insurrectionary preparations.
He must do nothing to provoke aggression; he must take
no hostile attitude without evident and imminent necessity;
he must not move his troops into Fort Sumter, unless
it were attempted to attack or take possession of
one of the forts or such a design were tangibly manifested.
Practically, when the attempt to seize the vacant forts
might come it would be too late to prevent it, and
certainly too late to move his own force into either
of them. Practically, too, any serious design
of that nature would never be permitted to come to
his knowledge. Supplement these literal negations
and restrictions by the unrecorded verbal explanations
and comments said to have been made by Major Buell,
by his disapproval of the meager defensive preparations
which had been made, such as his declaration that a
few loop-holes “would have a tendency to irritate
the people,” and we can readily imagine how
a faithful officer, whose reiterated calls for help
had been refused, felt, that under such instructions,
such surroundings, and such neglect “his hands
were tied,” and that he and his little command
were a foredoomed sacrifice.[2]